Bright Gyamfi

Bright Gyamfi is an Assistant Professor of History. Gyamfi’s research focuses on African and African Diaspora history. He writes on African intellectuals who worked to transform and radicalize the study of Africa in academic and intellectual centers around the Atlantic. His work has appeared in the Journal of African American History, African Studies Review, Radical History Review, Africa is a Country, and The Conversation. He holds a BA in History (Honors) and Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in history from Northwestern University.

Publications:

• “Uncovering Radical Histories: Anna Budu Arthur’s Everyday Politics of Decolonization and Transnational Solidarity,” Radical History Review, issue number 153 part of the collection on “Radical Histories of Decolonization.” (Forthcoming).

• “The Africa-Diaspora Orbit: Anani Dzidzienyo’s Contributions to Black Studies and Black Liberation,” African Studies Review, 66, 2 (2023), 464-89.

• “From Nkrumah’s Black Star to the African Diaspora: Ghanaian Intellectual Activists and the Development of Black Studies in the Americas,” Journal of African American History Special Issue on Reconceptualizing the History of Black Internationalism 106, 4 (2021), 682-705.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “The African Struggle is our Struggle: African Intellectuals, the Grenadian Revolution, and the Politics of History Making.” The Annual Commemorative Emancipation Public Education, St. George’s Grenada, 2025.

• “West Africa: History, Culture, and Politics.” Guest Speaker, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, 2024.

• “From Nkrumah’s Black Star to the African Diaspora: Ghanaian Intellectuals and the Development of Black Studies.” The Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, 2022.

Previous Organizations: 

• University of California, San Diego

• Northwestern University

Accomplishments:

• The Outstanding Faculty Award, Black Resource Center, University of California, San Diego, 2025

• Excellence in Teaching in African and African Diaspora Studies, African and African American Studies Research Center, University of California, San Diego, 2024.

• The Edward A. Bouchet Honor Society, 2022

Upcoming Projects:

• Embers of Pan-Africanism: Nkrumahist Intellectuals and Decolonization, 1960-1980 (Book Manuscript)

In my research, I highlight why and how anti-colonial and decolonial ideas emerge, as well as how insurgent ideas were sustained after the collapse of a radical government during a period of rapid decolonization from the 1960s to the 1980s.